The beleaguered South
African public broadcaster urgently wants a massive R3 billion bailout to keep
it from collapse, more than double its last government bailout of R1.47 billion
in 2009.
Parliament’s standing committee on
finance on Wednesday revealed that the struggling SABC – gutted after gross financial
mismanagement, corruption and a revolving door exodus of top executives and
board upheaval over the past three years – wants a R3 billion bailout.
The jaw-dropping R3 billion sticker
price is the first time the South African public has heard what the bailout
amount is that the SABC is asking the government for and that has so far been
deliberately kept secret.
It comes four months after the
cash-strapped SABC requested yet another government bailout from national
treasury in May, an amount that the new minister of communications, Ayanda
Dlodlo who said her ministry will support transparency, has been unwilling to
reveal despite repeatedly being asked about it.
The secrecy over the size of the amount
the SABC wants in its latest bailout has prevented any public debate to take
place over it, with the long-suffering SABC – similar to other parastatals like
the SAA, Eskom and others – in desperate need of another large cash injection
to keep it afloat.
The SABC is unable to get any bank loan
without a government-backed guarantee, meaning that the broadcaster is unable,
without help, to raise the necessary cash to cover its operating expenses on
its own.
A bailout in the form of a “government
guaranteed loan means that the South African public – through the government –
becomes responsible should the SABC be unable to repay it.
The SABC lost millions of rand due to a
litany of dubious contracts, consultancy fees, legal fees in lost court cases, exorbitant
executive salary hikes and irregular bonus payouts, unsustainable localTV and
radio content quotas, falling TV and radio viewership and listenership, as well
as wasted spend on local TV content that failed to attract ratings.
Despite being in deep financial trouble,
the SABC has inexplicably also been paying external companies for “double up”
work, for instance to collect SABC TV licence fees while the broadcaster has a
large in-house TV licence fee collecting staff. This practise has now been
cancelled by the interim board.
Ironically, while the SABC paid
mega-millions for external fees collection, the SABC’s revenue from TV licence
fees has plunged, with the broadcaster that paid more to receive less.
The mismanaged SABC owes millions of
rand to TV producers, various suppliers
and even the signal distributor Sentech with which the broadcaster had to make
a special arrangement to settle back payments later in order to prevent it’s
channels’ signals from being cut off and the SABC going dark.
The Special Investigative Unit (SIU) has
been given the green light to start a comprehensive, in-depth probe into
widespread mismanagement and corruption at the SABC, an investigation that is
expected to take three to four years to complete.
The SABC is expected to end its
2016/2017 financial year with a eye-watering R1.1 billion net loss. The
broadcaster posted a R395 million loss in 2014/2015 that became even worse and
grew to R411 million in 2015/2016. That loss will now again more than double in
just a year.
Earlier this month parliament was told
that while SABC3 as the broadcaster’s only commercial TV channel is supposed to
bring in the money to support the broadcaster’s public broadcasting services
(PBS) side, that it’s become SABC1 that now
has to support the crippled SABC3 that saw a content and ratings implosion.
Earlier in September Mathatha Tsedu,
interim SABC board deputy chairperson, told parliament that the SABC is unable
to do basic maintenance on its dilapdated buildings – unable to fix things like
leaking roofs or even broken doors. He said the SABC can only do building
repairs if something is “truly life-threatening”.
Mathatha Tsedu told parliament that without
another bailout the SABC “will survive” but that the broadcaster won’t be able
to fulfill its broad mandate as a public broadcaster.
“It is not going to be possible to
transform, modernise and digitise the SABC without an injection from external
funding,” he said, adding that without another bailout “we would survive, but
just survive”.
R3 billion
bailout ‘an astonishing amount of money’
The Democratic Alliance (DA) political
party’s Phumzile van Damme and a member of parliament says “it is serious
disappointing that parliament, and indeed the public had to find out about the
R3 billion amount of the SABC’s requested bailout in a roundabout manner”, and
described the R3 billion as “an astonishing amount of money”.
"The DA has on several occasions
requested Ayanda Dlodlo to make the SABC’s financial requirements public and to
consult parliament on the proposed bailout. However she refused, stating that
the amount doesn’t matter".
"Parliament’s communications committee
should have been consulted in the interest of good governance and transparency
especially given the financial stress at the SABC,” says Phumzile van Damme.
